Текст книги "Coupe"

Tikonov Free Republic

21 July 3029

Colonel Pavel Ridzik, Supreme Lord of the Tikonov Free Republic, stroked his reddish beard as he struggled to keep his temper in check. He glared at the tall, handsome, dark-haired man he'd lately come to think of as his "keeper."

"But General Sortek," he said, forcing lightness into his tone, "it is totally impractical for me to shift my ships from their ward stations at the jump points of Acamar, Terra Firma, Carver, and Pollux. Their removal from that last site I consider especially risky because of the potential for a Marik counterstrike."

Ardan Sortek smiled in a manner Ridzik found decidedly patronizing. "I understand your apprehension, Colonel, but perhaps I did not make myself clear. I make requests of you. Prince Hanse Davion gives orders.His orders are, quite simply, for those jump points to be cleared of troops. He gives no reason, and he only expects compliance."

Ridzik leaned back in his red leather chair and steepled his fingers. I am not so stupid as to believe that, Sortek. I have seen the change in your demeanor since you received that message from the Federated Suns. You have been edgy and worried. I know what goes on in your head, and I use it in our little game here.

Ridzik lifted his eyes. "Your Prince demanded that I strike out at the Free Worlds League, and I have done so. My troops have done remarkably well, but that is because they are fighting for me and a free Tikonov. Your Prince promised that the occupied portions of the Tikonov Commonality would be returned to my rule if I complied with his orders. I have done so, yet they remain under martial law and your thumb."

Ardan laughed and shook his head in mocking disbelief. "Again you try to link two distinct and separate issues. You already have administrative control of half the worlds we took. We maintain garrisons on those worlds so you will not have to waste your precious troops on little rebellions. Our presence there makes your government all the more welcome, and you know it."

Hanse Davion's liaison pointed toward the huge map hanging on Ridzik's wall. "Furthermore, my dear Colonel, we have made no demands on or claims to the worlds you have conquered in this campaign of yours. I think we have more than held up our side of the bargain."

Ridzik slammed his fist onto the top of his heavy wood desk. "You know as well as I that we're not talking about control of a dozen minor worlds. We're talking about theworld. How can my Tikonov Free Republic have any standing and validity when you still hold the jewel of my realm? Tikonov has ever been the centerpiece of the Commonality, yet you deny it to me. If Hanse Davion wants these worlds cleared, I want Tikonov!"

Ardan flushed red with fury. "You are in no place to make demands, Colonel. My Prince denies you Tikonov, but he could deny you things that will hurt more." Ardan waved a hand that took in Ridzik's sumptuous office and the gilt framing that surrounded the mythical scenes painted on the walls and ceiling. "My Prince could pull the plug on the billion C-bills he infuses into your economy on a weekly basis. Or perhaps you would prefer our munitions shipments to stop?"

Ridzik felt a pain in his chest as Sortek threatened the pull-out of Federated Suns economic and military aid. He raised his hands and forced a smile to his lips. "Now, General Sortek, there is no need for—"

Ardan cut him off with a sharp wave of a hand. "Yes there is, Colonel Ridzik. I told Hanse that it would come down to this one day, that I was not a diplomat who could stroke you with one hand while pushing you around with the other. I say what I mean and I can't stand dancing around points and sensibilities." He skewered Ridzik with a hot stare. "You and I are military men. We don't need the deceptions and false courtesies required by diplomats."

Ridzik's nostrils flared as his voice dropped to a rime-touched whisper. "Indeed, Colonel." The red-haired man spread his arms expansively. "Please, speak your mind. I am certain I will find your opinion of me enlightening."

"I hope like hell you do, Colonel." Muscles bunched at Ardan's jaws. "You've been acting like a puffed-up dictator who believes he's the major partner in this little alliance. Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but that's just not true. I'll not deny—hell, I'll be the first to agree—that you've got a good military mind, a great one even. Still, as Frederick Steiner of the Lyran Commonwealth shows, that does not mean you are a political genius."

Ardan smiled as Ridzik's hands curled into fists. "Sure, get angry, but realize a few basic facts first. You know your worlds cannot hold us off it we decide to take them. You know you've got no basis to make demands on Hanse Davion, and no real reason to expect him to dance to the tune you call. Most important, you know you're a puppet and it's about time you remember who pulls your strings."

How dare you!Ridzik's dark eyes flashed with unbridled fury. Do you imagine your status as Davion's watchdog will protect you so far from home? Thisis hostile territory, Sortek. Many strange things can happen here.

Ridzik forced his anger down. "Very well, General Sortek. You have made your point. I shall acquiesce to Prince Hanse Davion's order and clear those worlds." He hesitated, groping for the right words. "As well I appreciate your frankness. Now I know where I truly stand, and I shall take steps to be sure I do not make attempts to slip my leash again."

Ardan Sortek bowed his head, then turned crisply on his heel and left the room. Ridzik fondled a crystal paperweight as Sortek departed, but resisted the temptation to hurl it in his enemy's direction. Instead, he set it down deliberately, then rose from his chair and paced his office.

Yes, General, you have told me precisely where I stand. In doing so, you narrow my choice of actions until there is but one.Ridzik paused at the map on the wall and studied the string of four worlds Hanse Davion had ordered cleared of defenders' ships at the jump points. They make such a pretty line across my territory, linking a path from Tharkad to New Avalon. Now who might be making use of that little route?

Ridzik laughed aloud to himself. "Are you that much of a sentimental fool, Hanse Davion? Do you so desire to have your wife with you on your first anniversary that you will place my star systems at risk to have her by your side? People do such foolish things when they're in love. That's why I've avoided such entanglements."

Ridzik tapped the small dot representing Terra Firma on the map. The ambush will have to be here. We will ensure a helium failure on the JumpShip waiting to carry Melissa toward her beloved. We will divert her ship to the planet. .. No, it would be better to transfer her to one of my ships at the jump point. The diplomats traveling with her will not want to risk an affront to my dignity by refusing my offer of aid. Then I will have her, and I will treat her very nicely. Once Hanse gives me what I want, once he returnes to me what is rightfully mine, I will return his wife to him.

Ridzik spun as someone knocked lightly on his door. "Yes, what is it?"

A Corporal opened the door to hand the Colonel a slender box tied with a string. "We've scanned it, sir. Nothing dangerous. It came to you, marked 'Personal.' "

Ridzik smiled and quickly read the soldier's name tag. "Thank you, Borosky." He accepted the slim parcel, but waited until the door had closed before he took the box to his desk and sat down. He smiled to himself as a giddy excitement bubbled up inside him. He had always loved surprises. Feeling like a child at Christmas, he slipped the string from the box and opened it.

His heart leaped to his throat. Oh, I must have been a very good boy this year.Lying on a bed of cotton was a pale green sheet of note paper that reflected rainbow lights from its glazed surface. Grasping it by the corners, he lifted it from the box. He recognized the handwriting immediately, and the shock of it made the presence of a hotel room magkey also in the box insignificant.

The verigraphednote trembled in his hands. Barely able to believe it, he read, "I have escaped him and now I will be with you for all time." Though he did not need verification, he let light play across the surface of the holographic seals encasing and fused with the paper. The beautiful, smiling face of a young woman with long black hair looked back at him.

Ridzik sank back in his chair. Incredible! This is perfect!He smiled like a cat with a belly full of milk. Elizabeth Jordan Liao leaves her husband and joins forces with me. That gives me even more political pull in Davion's occupied areas. I could easily force more concessions from him because Elizabeth's influence could make holding his worlds a nightmare.

Suspicion ripped a gash through his happiness, but he shook it off. Theverigraph proves she wrote the note. The holographic image is seared into the paper's coating while being processed.

Prying the layers apart to substitute messages destroys the original. You cannot forge one of these.He glanced at the image again. No matter how good a dummy or double, theverigraph would show it up to be false. I know those lips and that throat too well to be deceived. She is here. I will make her my consort, in one deft stroke stabbing deep into Maximilian's heart and causing Prince Hanse Davion serious consternation. Then I will kill Davion's friend and kidnap his wife.

Ridzik picked up the magkey and instantly recognized the hotel's logo. Elizabeth, you always did have extravagant tastes.He smiled and slipped the keycard into the inside pocket of his jacket. First one conquest, then another. It is a pity, Ardan Sortek, that you will not be around to watch the finale of this puppet's revenge.

* * *

Having changed from his uniform into civilian clothes, Ridzik stood in front of the Hotel Percheron. Even the drizzling could not dampen his spirits. He recalled their last time together, on Terra during Hanse and Melissa's wedding celebration, and his grin widened. If tonight is but half as passionate, it will be a very warm welcome.

Always conscious of security, Ridzik had managed to learn that the key belonged to Room 1145. The guest registered to that room was a Ms. Beth Geordana. Not only was it a close match to her maiden name, but Ridzik recalled that she once mentioned, during a tender interlude, that she had covertly written poetry under that name.

Ridzik moved toward the hotel's side entrance, avoiding the bright lights of the main entryway. She had told him that the State Poetry Review had rejected her poems as being too forced and commercial. When they had further suggested she write for greeting cards, Elizabeth had these editors sent to Brazen Heart. "My dear Pavel, it was the best thing I could have done for them," she'd said. He recalled how the flickering firelight had caressed her throat as she explained her logic. "How could they possibly release their artistic potential without having suffered in their lives?"

Ridzik knew better than to love a woman like that, for an emotional tie with her would hobble him. He did not deny the sexual attraction, and there might even be some affection for one another, but it was their lust for power that drove them together. She will discard me as soon as she has what she wants from me, and I her. I will just have to make sure I strike first.

The room clerk needed no prompting to remember Ms. Geordana. He described her as being tall and slender, with an arrest-ingly beautiful face and long, silken red hair. Ridzik smiled because he knew she'd colored her hair to match the shade of his as a sign to him.

He entered the hotel unnoticed among a group of guests, then joined them in the elevator. He ignored their chatter, thankful that the eleventh floor came before he lost control and shot one man for seditious talk. Ridzik let the doors snap shut behind him, then forced his anger away. You cannot let that idiot spoil your evening. Find him tomorrow and have him killed, but tonight is for you and Elizabeth.

He rapped gently on the door, then slipped the magkey into the door's slot. As he waited for the lock to open, he suddenly recalled his first visit to a bordello when he was a raw recruit bound for the Academy. I was a gawky kid then, nervous and more afraid of the woman that I was of the ridicule I'd get from my comrades if I did not go through with it.He forced himself to smile confidently. That was long ago, the end of an era in my life.

The lock clicked open and he slipped into the nearly dark room. Candles, three on each of the twinned bedside tables, illuminated the wide canopied bed in their wavering glow. She stood beyond it, silhouetted in the moonlight before the window. The white light shone through her diaphanous gown, tantalizing and teasing him with an erotic outline of her slender body. Her hair, red only on the edges where the moon touched it, formed a black veil against her back.

Ridzik swallowed hard. He felt his desire for her stirring, and for a fleeting moment, he wondered if so noble a woman might not make him a suitable consort for life. He closed the door, then removed his coat and tossed it onto a chair. "I have come, Elizabeth."

She turned from the window, filling her right hand with the dark pistol that had been hidden on the sill. Before Ridzik could react, she raised it and fired one hissed shot. Ridzik felt something sharp sting him, then looked down at the silver syringe cartridge sticking in the upper left portion of his chest.

Before he could frame a question in his mind and give it voice, his legs collapsed. He landed on the floor with a heavy thump, overturning the chair where he'd laid his coat. He tried to scramble to his feet, but his body refused to take orders. What is happening to me?

The woman tangled her fingers in his hair and tipped back his head. She lay on the bed, hanging over the edge just enough to reach his head and let him see her ample cleavage. Her red hair flowed down toward the carpeted floor, veiling her face in shadow. "Well, if it isn't my old friend, Pavel Ridzik."

With her left hand, she pulled off her wig. The candles provided just enough pale light for Ridzik to recognize her. His jaw trembled as he tried to speak, but her predatory grin stole any desire to make himself heard. "Yes, Pavel, I am the one they sent to kill you six months ago. You escaped the bomb I left for you, which reflected badly upon me. I had to leave the service and start freelancing." She pursed her lips and shook her head. "That's such a nasty life for a nice girl like me. Wouldn't you agree."

She moved Ridzik's head up and down to make it nod in agreement. "Fortunately, my current employer is a woman with exquisite taste and the unusual ability of knowing what she wants and how to get it. In this case, she wants you dead.

"The drug I hit you with," she continued with clinical detachment, "has knocked your voluntary muscles out of whack. It's nice because it goes away without a trace after a dozen hours or so—not that you'll care. Even so, it should deaden the pain a bit."

She released his head, then slid from the bed and lifted him up. She pulled him onto the bed, rolled him onto his back, and crossed his forearms over his heart. She nodded and winked at him.

"Let's see, what else did Lady Romano want me to tell you?" She looked toward the ceiling, then smiled. "She said you would want to know that Elizabeth did make the verigraphherself. No one can forge them, you know. At least not in the Capellan Confederation, though there are rumors of a process in the Federated Suns. But that's news that doesn't concern you. In any event, Romano said that Lady Elizabeth created the verigraphafter Romano promised to ship her off to you if Elizabeth would renounce all ties and claims to the throne. Then, of course, Romano had her killed."

Ridzik felt a thickness in his throat. No! This is impossible! This cannot be happening. I am Pavel Ridzik!

The assassin smiled down at him as she filled a syringe with a clear liquid. "I do want you to know that, under normal circumstances, I would not use this on a person of your stature in the Successor States, but Lady Romano was rather specific. In fact, giving you as much of the dart juice as I did would have displeased her because it will numb you somewhat."

She shook her head as she felt for his carotid artery. "They made this stuff in the Draconis Combine, to be used on traitors to the state. It supposedly attacks only neurons, nibbling them away like a slow acid bath."

Ridzik dimly felt the sting as she plunged the needle into his neck. "They say it will kill you in just five hours, Colonel, but the agony will make if feel like five centuries." She smiled sweetly, men bent down and kissed him full on the mouth.

She caressed the side of his face, igniting fire in all his nerves. "Sorry, Colonel, to leave you this way, but I have a reputation to maintain, and you've been living on borrowed time ever since you escaped my bomb." She straightened up, then winked at him. "They say that if you're lucky, you can swallow your tongue before die pain becomes too great."

Her mocking laughter and the click of the door shutting behind her were the last sounds, save his own sobs, that Pavel Ridzik ever heard.